


brontide & petrichor

by feralphoenix



Series: a heart is no king's throne [3]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Autistic Frisk, Benevolent Player, Borderline Personality Disorder, Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - C-PTSD, Gaslighting, Gen, Intrusive Thoughts, Nonverbal Frisk, Sharing a Body, Spoilers, Suicide, Temporary Character Death, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-25
Updated: 2017-01-25
Packaged: 2018-09-19 19:10:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9456719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: Frisk and Chara encounter Undyne and debate methods.





	

**Author's Note:**

> _(Hard times befallen the sole survivors_ – is there nothing but [rust](http://marchenwings.tumblr.com/post/154920186959/) and ashes in you?)
> 
>  
> 
> a clarification for the tags - chara has c-ptsd and frisk has bpd. (they have these things in every fic in my body of work, actually, that's not a new thing, but it's especially relevant here as an explanation for why they are behaving this way under these circumstances.)
> 
> special thanks to [sugarglassy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sorch/pseuds/sugarglassy) for helping unstick me when i got stuck writing the petty slapfight!!!

You come to gasping at the familiar distance from the crag, the awful buzzing sensation of phantom pain pulsing through your fragile meat and sinew like electricity. There’s nothing physically wrong with you, but until you’ve truly gained your footing you feel like the cat in the box—alive and dead all at once. Chara’s memories supply you with a mental picture of a crude hologram on a card, images printed in such a way that they seem to shift depending on how you hold the paper.

Shaking, you turn and walk back up the path, stumbling across the long bridge and back into the dark grass, crumpling to your knees and dry heaving.

You managed to hold out for five minutes this time before you ran out of items and got too tired to keep up with Undyne’s spear attacks. No amount of pleading or challenging seemed to do anything; no matter how long you tried to hold out or how many times you told her you didn’t want to fight, it was useless. You’ve tried stocking up on Sea Tea at Gerson’s store, you’ve tried different combinations of the ballet tutu and shoes and the notebook and glasses you’ve found in Waterfall, you’ve tried _everything._ Eventually your stamina runs out or you mess up blocking or dodging and she kills you all the same.

You _won’t_ fight back. You won’t. But you’re out of ideas as to how to make her back down, and you’re frustrated and despairing. This time you might really be stuck, for good.

And the bright bubbly excitement in Chara’s side of your shared mindscape is absolutely not helping anything at all.

“She’s so _cool,”_ they gush, giving off a glittery, sparkly aura that sort of translates to you as the sensation of being too energized to keep from bouncing in place in your seat.

 _Why do you like her so much,_ you think at them as grouchily as you can.

This doesn’t even manage to dent Chara’s enthusiasm. You growl. “She’s a real hero! Someone like her really _could_ protect monsters from humans. She wouldn’t just let someone who’s bad news walk all over everyone.”

(There’s something—some sort of swell under the bright candy coating of their outward emotions, but they’ll definitely notice if you try to poke at and gauge it.)

Really “heroic” of her, though, to turn a defenseless little kid into a human pincushion. The seething of resentment swells up under you like a wave, and you clench your fists and shut your eyes tight, waiting for it to pass.

“Don’t talk about her like that,” Chara snaps back. Your chest jolts, that funny sensation like you just missed a step walking down the stairs, and you feel your face and ears flush.

_Well, why are you taking HER side anyway? It’s like you don’t even care that she keeps killing us! Can’t you even tell how much it hurts?!_

Chara snorts, derisive. “Please. There’s barely any pain at all when she kills you, it’s over right away. This is nothing compared to how _I_ died. It’s practically merciful.”

All the breath rushes out of you, like you’ve just been punched in the stomach. Your insides feel all squirmy and clenched up, as if you’ve eaten something bad. _Why are you making this all about YOU all of a sudden?_

The last carbonated fizziness of Chara’s excited mooning over Undyne goes flat and acidic and sharp, and your stomach sinks further. That might have been the wrong thing to say. “No, I think _you’re_ the one who needs to stop making this about _you._ Don’t you get the bigger picture here? I read you all the history monuments. You heard Undyne. For her, for _everybody,_ this is about what humans did to monsters. This is about the threat you pose, and about how to protect everyone’s hopes and dreams.”

The way they say it is so arch and cold and bitter, such a vicious echo of Undyne’s impassioned speech, that it’s like a bulb blowing out in your head.

 _You can’t say that. It’s not fair,_ you shout across your mindscape. _I don’t want to hurt the monsters. I know what happened to them was wrong! I never asked to get caught up in this mess! Not every human is as bad as you seem to think we all are! So don’t lump me in with the villains in some ancient fairytale!!_

Chara is quiet for a moment, and then when they speak again, their voice in your head is like smoke. “All humans _are_ bad,” they say, bright and deliberate and low, like they’ve rested a hand on your shoulder and are speaking softly into your ear. It sends shivers up and down the length of your spine. “All of them. Monsters are gentle and kind, beings made up of love and hope and compassion—you read that in the library, didn’t you? That it’s humans’ innate lack of those things that makes us question the absolute nature of the soul.” The squirmy feeling in your guts is back, but Chara doesn’t leave you time to interject. “All humans are cruel and evil. I’m no exception, and neither are you.”

 _I haven’t hurt anyone!_ you protest feebly.

Chara is quiet for just a moment, then:

“Threaten,” they say, and present you with the memory of a Froggit. “Terrorize. Pick on. Heckle. Ignore. Insult.” Every time, you’re confronted with the image of each monster. “They were _your_ ideas, Frisk.”

_I never ACTED on any of them!_

“Maybe not,” Chara says lightly. From their tone, it feels like they’re smiling, and you can imagine the expression on them clearly: Long and thin and not meeting their wide-open eyes at all, the trace of a sneer in the creases of their nose. “But would those options ever occur to a _truly_ gentle and harmless person?”

Your hands shake. It roars in your ears, that certainty, the precisely launched barbs that land exactly where Chara wanted them to. What a _difficult_ child you are, you with your meltdowns and your crying jags and tantrums when you get overwhelmed. Wanting to bite or stamp your feet or break things or be mean just for the sake of being mean, wanting to hurt people, swallowing those impulses down because they’re bad and you’re bad and you’re scared. Your hands shake. Your stomach is an angry beehive.

I hate you, you think weakly, tiny and down in the very pit of you where Chara won’t hear. I hate you I hate you I want to tear out your laughing throat, I want to tear out my insides in fistfuls and throw them at you, you’re awful you’re evil I _hate_ you.

You stand up like a kettle boiling and rush out over the narrow bridge, careen off the side headfirst, the sharp clean feel of falling. Hard impact, sticky, wet; blood and air bubble ugly in your open throat, and you make a small noise, or maybe Chara does—it’s hard to tell.

Everything goes dark.

 

 

(You see the old familiar memory, the voice in the dark telling Chara to stay determined, and the rush of confused emotion abates rapidly, leaving only embarrassment and frustration at your rashness behind.

You wonder what Chara is thinking and feeling right now.

You’re an idiot.)

 

 

You come to at the crag again, and reach up and press your hands to either side of your head. It still aches, but your skull is intact, not crushed. All your bones are whole and inside you where they’re supposed to be.

“Are you _quite_ done,” Chara says. They sound tetchy as ever, but underneath that they feel rattled, like a recently startled cat that’s still got a lot of its fur standing up.

First comes the wave of cloying gladness, molasses-sweet and sticky. No matter how angry with them you get, no matter how disgusted with you they are, they won’t leave you. They will _never_ leave you. They will always be with you, because as long as you and they are linked, they can’t go anywhere. Even if you hurt them, even if you’re bad and messy and ugly, Chara of all people will never abandon you.

Next comes the shame.

They _can’t_ leave you. There’s nothing they can do to escape if you lash out, if you decide kneejerk to subject them to an ugly death alongside you. How does this disprove anything that they accused you of? You shouldn’t have gotten angry. You shouldn’t have let them get under your skin. You’re the worst. You really are a shining example of everything Chara hates about humanity.

You can’t even keep your distance from them until you’re sure you’re calm.

Undyne is standing atop the rock formation, still glowering down at you. Her ponytail is flying like a banner and her eye is bright with malice.

Her words resurface in your mind again—monsters’ hopes and dreams. Maybe it would just be better to surrender, to give your soul up, to stop struggling. She won’t let you through. You don’t want to hurt her, even after all she’s done to you. Maybe this way you could at least do some good for _someone._

(Maybe, if you die in a way that sticks, Chara will finally be sorry.)

“You can’t,” Chara says very simply, and you startle. You didn’t mean to think so loudly.

 _Why not?_ you ask, and immediately feel stupid and mulish.

“Because we have to keep going,” they say, again very simply, as if it’s obvious. That catches you off-balance; you were expecting them to protest that they would die too. (Is this better or worse in terms of them actually showing any concern for your well-being specifically, you wonder, and shame rolls in you again at your selfishness.)

Chara has that air to them again, like they’re listening to something very far away; you want to shake them, to drag their attention back to you, so you just make yourself as small as possible in your own mind instead, sort of the mental equivalent of sitting on your hands. You rock on your feet a little as you wait.

 _I can’t get past her,_ you protest at last. _I’ve tried everything. I won’t give up my soul if you don’t want me to—_ will they be grateful, at your grudging consideration for them? Will they not even dignify your clumsy manipulations with a response?— _but I might as well just go back to Napstablook’s place and lie on the floor with them forever, because we can’t get past her without killing her, and I won’t do that._

“I don’t _want_ you to do that,” Chara replies, nettled. You have their full attention now, at least. They sigh, low and gusty instead of tight and high-strung. “Look. Let me handle this one, okay? I won’t hurt Undyne. I won’t do anything you’re morally opposed to or whatever. I just want to get us through alive, and this is quicker than waiting for you to figure it out yourself. You can have control back as soon as we’re through here. I promise.”

The last two words are threaded with something personal, something so warm it burns, raw memories of the slow agony of repeated betrayal and disappointment, and the sterling sanctity of their word. They’re so earnest it’s hard to look at straight on, and they want very much to convince you that they mean what they say.

 _…Okay,_ you relent at last, and you give your body over to Chara fiber by fiber, letting them ease in bit by bit as you curl up small and quiet and hopefully harmless in the back of your own mind.

They take a deep breath, roll their shoulders, clench and unclench their fists a few times—and march out steadily to meet Undyne as she leaps down from the crag with a shouted _“En guarde!!”_

Immediately her magic paralyzes them, their soul flickering green, Undyne’s own magic spear materializing in their hands. They’re practiced as they deflect her attacks, you guess relying on the muscle memory you’ve built up over dozens of reloads; when Undyne pauses to let them act, they don’t waste their time challenging or pleading with her. They just hold still, like they’re—like they’re biding their time, or something.

“Maybe a better person than me would wait for you to hit on this on your own,” they say as they bat away spears, your wispy voice too quiet for it to reach Undyne’s ears. “But I haven’t got the patience for that. I want _answers._ And it’ll be easier for you to understand, maybe, if somebody shows you.

“You have more choices here than lashing out or trying to find the right way to placate her or lying down and being a doormat and just taking it. This isn’t like with you and me, where we’re stuck with each other and there’s nothing we can do about that.”

You want to demand that they just get to the point already, but in that moment Undyne hurls a spear at Chara, and your soul turns red again, and they duck and roll—

—and barely have they gotten to their feet again when they hare off towards the mouth of the cavern, running at full speed.

Your mind seems to go staticky with the force of your astonishment, and Chara laughs. It comes out more like a wheeze. Your heart is pounding relentlessly against their reckless flight, your limbs trembling with the unfamiliarity of the choice to flee. Your expression is frozen in their tense wide-eyed smile.

Then you hear Undyne clanking after you, and you feel cold all over, even as distant from your own body as you are. You’re not even halfway to the bend in the tunnel when she catches up to Chara with her longer legs and freezes them in place again.

“You won’t get away from me this time!” Undyne trumpets, readying her spears. “Honestly, I’m doing you a favor—no human has _ever_ made it past Asgore!”

Chara reacts to those words, but so minutely that you can’t discern the fine details of what they’re feeling. If anything, they only seem more determined.

“Honestly, killing you now is an act of mercy!” Undyne goes on, and attacks.

Chara doesn’t waste their breath on trying to talk to you this time, all their focus bent on blocking. Your arms are shaking from the adrenaline, or from exhaustion, you’re not sure; sometimes Chara slips and takes the hit, and you flinch alongside them, pain flashing up the connection between your souls.

But as soon as Undyne’s spell breaks, they hurtle off down the corridor again.

 _This isn’t helping,_ you think at them, suddenly overwhelmed by despair, as they rush past a big scrolling sign. _She’ll always catch up to us. You can’t get away forever._

 _You shut up and stop being so defeatist!_ they snarl back, mind-to-mind, your throat and lungs too raw from breathing hard for speech. _Look at how much further we’ve come! I wouldn’t have made it here at ALL if I hadn’t run!_

It occurs to you dully as your phone rings that Chara might not only mean the fight with Undyne.

The clanking behind you stops while Papyrus is on the line, giving Chara a few precious moments to catch their breath, but Undyne catches them again right before the bright exit of the cave, and they have to endure her onslaught once more before they can flee. They carry you out of the cool dark tunnel and into a bright wall of heat even as Undyne yells “COME BACK HERE, YOU LITTLE PUNK!!!” from behind you.

Chara sprints past Sans snoozing at a guard station, then down a long wooden bridge and onto a stone outcropping. It’s not as bright as Snowdin here, but still bright enough that they have to squint a little, and you’re terrified that they’re going to run straight off the rocks to another ugly death below, but somehow they stay surefooted in their flight.

The clanking behind you is still there, but seems to be slowing down—and finally there’s a great crash of metal, and Chara slows to a stop, clutching your chest and gasping against the overwarm air that seems to deny you the oxygen your lungs are screaming for.

Finally, they turn: Undyne has collapsed in the middle of the path, an ungainly sprawl of heavy armor.

 _She looks like she’s drying out,_ Chara observes, straightening. Your mouth is dry from hyperventilating; they close your eyes and swallow, still massaging your chest.

When they open your eyes, they turn a little to show you that there’s a water cooler with little cups perched on this stone platform.

 _What will you do?_ they ask.

You could give her water. You could also follow Chara’s example, and just leave. You could pour it all out in front of her and just let her fry to a crisp. Nausea rolls up in you as you remember, vividly, the scent of grilling saury on one of the rare occasions your mother made everyone breakfast.

So you stay quiet. A good person wouldn’t think something like this.

 _This is your body,_ Chara says. _It’s your journey. You have to choose._

 _I don’t want to do it,_ you whine, hating yourself and Chara and Undyne and everything. _I’m scared._

 _I’ll do whatever it is for you,_ Chara says, with a bite of that impatience, _but you have to make the choice._

You try to sit on your thoughts, try to fold them up into a tiny scrap of paper so that you can swallow them and turn them into mush and nothing.

The nudge comes through Chara, like it sometimes does—the gentle pressure of a suggestion. It’s not them doing it—they’re still waiting for your answer. And the nudge is only a nudge. You’re free to disobey, if you want to.

Chara swallows again. Your throat is very dry, and you can feel the urge to cough coming on, the urge to choke up phlegm and re-coat your esophagus and bronchi so it won’t hurt so much to breathe.

 _It doesn’t really count unless you act on it,_ Chara says, gruff and so small that you almost don’t pick up on it.

They look at Undyne again. Possibilities roil in you, dizzying; you squinch shut the eyes of your heart and think _help her_ as loud as you can, loud enough to drown out your uglier thoughts.

Chara stumbles over to the water cooler and fills a cup. They take very deliberate steps towards Undyne, and lean in to pour it over her head, careful to shake out every last drop.

Undyne grunts and opens her eye almost immediately, armor grinding and groaning as she heaves herself back up to her feet.

She looks down at you and Chara for a very long moment: Cup still in your hand, still panting, breath making an ugly rasping noise that probably tells her clear as anything that you didn’t even think to direct Chara to take a drink first. You shudder, even hidden behind Chara; if she wanted to grab you or kill you now, it would be pathetically easy.

But all Undyne does is make a face and turn, clanking back over the bridge. Her tall proud silhouette gets smaller and smaller; she passes the sentry station and goes back into the cave, disappearing.

Chara starts to shake, their breathing getting even more ragged. This time when they head to the water cooler they stumble and nearly trip; their fingers fumble the spigot as they fill the cup a second time, and they almost choke on the water when they drink.

They still fill up the cup a third time to get your body the water it needs, and a fourth to pour over your head for good measure. You’re covered in sweat. Their frozen smile is still plastered to your face—you don’t think their expression has changed at all this entire time.

 _Thank you,_ you tell them at last.

That flare of emotion in them might be shame or it might be bashfulness—you aren’t sure. “Whatever,” they croak out loud, and they mush the empty cup in their hand, jamming it into your pocket so that it scratches your leg.

Even so, they still hand control of your body back to you without making a fuss.


End file.
